Fresh Meat Rituals: Confronting the Flesh in Performance Art

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Abstract

Meat entails a contradictory bundle of associations. In its cooked form, it is
inoffensive, a normal everyday staple for most of the population. Yet in its raw, freshly
butchered state, meat and its handling provoke feelings of disgust for even the most avid of
meat-eaters. Its status as a once-living, now dismembered body is a viscerally disturbing
reminder of our own vulnerable bodies. Since Carolee Schneeman's performance Meat Joy
(1964), which explored the taboo nature of enjoying flesh as Schneeman and her co
performers enthusiastically danced and wriggled in meat, many other performance artists
have followed suit and used raw meat in abject performances that focus on bodily tensions,
especially the state of the body in contemporary society. I will examine two contemporary
performances in which a ritual involving the use of raw meat, an abject and disgusting
material, is undertaken in order to address the violence, dismemberment and guilt that the
body undergoes from political and societal forces. In Balkan Baroque (1997), Marina
Abramović spent three days cleansing 1,500 beef bones of their blood and gristle amidst an
installation that addressed both the Serbo-Croatian civil war and her personal life. In The
Burden of Guilt (1997), Tania Bruguera slowly ate a bowl of dirt over the course of an hour
under the weight of a slaughtered lamb in her living room that she had opened to the
public. Though these works differ in intent and the socio-political context from which they
emerge, they both exemplify the use of raw meat as a medium uniquely suited to express the
anxieties of the vulnerable body. Both artists rely on an abject meat ritual in order to
confront and possibly transcend the violence and horror that threaten their individual bodies
as well as the traumatic experiences of the collectivities they represent. These collectivities
include the war-torn and stereotyped Balkans that Abramović represents or the Cuban
citizenry burdened by an oppressive regime that Bruguera embodies. Both artists, however,
use their bodies in rituals that reflect the universal human condition.